Barack Obama Archives - Page 9 of 16

Presidents Day 2015

Q: Has the gun with which Oswald shot President Kennedy been returned to the family?

President Calvin Coolidge was designated Chief Leading Eagle of the Sioux tribe when he was adopted as the first white chief of the tribe at the celebration of the 51st anniversary of the settlement of Deadwood, South Dakota, August 9, 1927. This designation came as a result of Coolidge signing the Indian Citizen Act on June 2, 1924, which granted “full U.S. citizenship to America’s indigenous peoples.”

The bill happened in part as a result of World War I when “The Indian, though a man without a country…, threw himself into the struggle to help throttle the unthinkable tyranny of the Hun.”

I was unfamiliar with this picture until I saw it on the news around Christmas 2014, when it mentioned the risk of Chief Executives wearing things on their heads other than hats, and cited the headdress that the current President was wearing recently, pictured below.
***
Speaking of World War I, from Now I Know:

One of the more positive aspects of American presidential politics is the relatively orderly, entirely peaceful succession process. Every four years, on the Tuesday after the first Monday of November, voters across the nation go to the polls and cast their ballots. Those votes are translated into votes for… electors, and a few weeks later, those electors cast the votes which actually determine who is going to be inaugurated into the office of the President… Even though the campaign can be acrimonious, to date at least, no sitting president has ever attempted to disrupt this process.

But there was, almost, an exception. In 1916, incumbent President Woodrow Wilson faced a challenge from Republican Charles Evans Hughes…

Which US presidents have won the Nobel Peace Prize?

Secretaries of State who became President:

Thomas Jefferson (3) under George Washington (1)
James Madison (4) under Jefferson (3)
James Monroe (5) under Madison (4)
John Quincy Adams (6) under Monroe (5)
Martin Van Buren (8) under Andrew Jackson (7)
James Buchanan (15) under James K. Polk (11)

And none since unless Hillary gets elected President.

From The Weird, Embarrassing, Fascinating Things People Asked Librarians Before the Internet:
Q: Has the gun with which Oswald shot President Kennedy been returned to the family?
A: No. It’s at the National Archives and Records Administration building in College Park, Maryland.

Lyndon Johnson was a civil rights hero. But also a racist.
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I’ve wondered why Bill Clinton, only the second President in American history to be impeached, got to be so popular by the end of his second term. I think Dan Savage of Savage Love hit upon it:

Here’s the takeaway from the Bill and Monica story: An out-of-control special prosecutor appointed to investigate the suicide of a White House aide wound up “exposing” a series of [sex acts] that President Bill Clinton got from a White House intern. Problematic power differential, yes, but consenting adults just the same. Politicians and pundits and editorial boards called on Clinton to resign after the affair was made public, because the American people, they insisted, had lost all respect for Clinton. He couldn’t possibly govern after the [detailed sex acts], and the denials (“I did not have sexual relations with that woman”). Clinton refused to resign and wound up getting impeached by an out-of-control GOP-controlled Congress…

But guess what? The American people weren’t [ticked] at Clinton. Clinton’s approval ratings shot up. People looked at what was being done to Clinton — a special prosecutor with subpoena powers and an unlimited budget asking Clinton under oath about his sex life—and thought, “…I would hate to have my privacy invaded like that.” People’s sympathies were with Clinton, not with the special prosecutor, not with the GOP-controlled/out-of-control Congress.

Presidential Libraries and Museums for every President from Herbert Hoover through George W. Bush

Handsome Franklin Pierce by Nik Durga

Behind the Presidents: at Mount Rushmore

The youngest Presidents: 26, 35, 42, 18, 44, 22, 14, 20, 11, 13
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Lots of different “worst” lists:

Indian-Killer Andrew Jackson Deserves Top Spot on List of Worst U.S. Presidents

10 reasons why Ronald Reagan was the worst president of our lifetime

The Worst Presidents, which includes all the Presidents between #9 and #18, except #11 and #16; plus three 20th century picks

January rambling: broken spaghetti

Has America gone crazy? “It’s hard to know why we are the way we are, and — believe me — even harder to explain it to others.” Plus ignorance as a virtue.

Barack Obama’s 2015 State of the Union address: annotated. And the official website for House Republicans has posted on YouTube a doctored version of the SOTU address which cuts out comments where the President was critical of Republican rhetoric on climate change.

How Expensive It Is to Be Poor.

Iraq Veterans Against the War.

Dustbury writes: “Depressed? ‘Buck up,’ they say. ‘Smile a little.’ They are, of course, full of crap.”

Last year Roger Ver renounced his US citizenship to avoid paying US taxes. “Now he’s upset that the ‘tyrants’ in the US government won’t give him a visa to visit Miami.”

From Forbes, hardly a liberal bastion: Bibi Netanyahu — aka ‘The Republican Senator From Israel’ — May Have Made A Fatal Political Mistake.

Solving homelessness in Salt Lake City.

Hetero privilege: holding hands. Also, SCOTUS takes up marriage equality. I too would have cited Loving v. Virginia, because I do that.

Remembering Auschwitz: 70 Years After Liberation. Also, Auschwitz Survivor Gena Turgel Walked Out of Gas Chamber Alive and the BBC flew a drone over Auschwitz.

Research Finds That Guns Do Indeed Kill People.

The strike that changed Milwaukee by Michael Rosen.

Eddie’s cancer updates. Then, Ronald Keith and Michael Edward get married in Chicago, “an event 25 years in the making!”

Ursula Le Guin on the future of literature.

A Pharmacist’s tongue-in-cheek guide to patient etiquette.

Major progressive New Testament scholar Marcus Borg has died.

How Lakes Can Explode Like A Can Of Soda.

Why you can’t actually break spaghetti in two: “Invariably a third piece is formed, and sometimes a fourth.” And speaking of broken: a copy of one of the largest check I’ve seen.

Dustbury’s memory does not serve him well. Sounds like me.

Burger Math and Cereal Killers and the smallpox boat and 8-6-7-5-3-0-….

Yitang Zhang solves a pure-math mystery, involving prime numbers.

Steampunk in New Zealand.

Uthaclena goes off the tracks.

My favorite haiku of the month.

Operation Downfall.

Why Are Some People Better at Drawing than Others?

Cartoonist Jorge Gutierrez interviews Sergio Aragonés.

In honor of the first anniversary of Pete Seeger’s death, check out the January 2015 issue of the Monthly Review.

Paul McCartney describes his feelings re: the fact that the band’s music is now being used as a point of focus in college-level popular music courses.

Paul Simon and John Lennon co-presenting the GRAMMY for Record Of The Year at the 17th GRAMMY awards.

K-Chuck Radio: You can go, but we’ll still have hits….

Muppets: Yorick and Zizzy Zoomers. Also, the very significant I Love My Hair and The Color of Me, plus Nick McKaig’s rendition of the theme from The Muppet Show and how Jim Henson worked and a long interview with Frank Oz.

How Yogi Bear’s collar revolutionized television, plus Daws Butler on You Bet Your Life; the cartoon voice artist was quite short.

SamuraiFrog pointed me to The Way They Was: Six Totally Different Shows The Simpsons Has Been.

The Origin Of “The Trix Rabbit”.

What the Marvel Super-Heroes looked like on Saturday mornings.

Ken Levine on hosting this month’s Friday Night Spotlight series on Neil Simon for TCM. And Mark Evanier makes some corrections to those intros.

NO “BLAH BLAH BLAH”.

The NFL finds that Patriots used underinflated footballs. Perhaps coach Bill Belichick can’t help but channel his inner Richard Nixon. Go, Seahawks!

The TV show Parenthood just went off the air. I watched it religiously. From PARADE: What I Learned About My Family From Parenthood’s Braverman Family.

Why local social media goddess Kristi Gustafson Barlette took a break from social media.

From the Onion News Network: Judge Rules White Girl Will Be Tried As Black Adult. And from the Onion: I Don’t Vaccinate My Child Because It’s My Right To Decide What Eliminated Diseases Come Roaring Back.

GOOGLE ALERTS (me)

I am described as a Kirby Delauter Super Fan, which made me LOL, literally. I have witnesses.

The page turner.

Arthur on Mario Cuomo.

I asked Arthur about Facebook quizzes. Here’s one he did: What Is Your 2014 Anthem. He got Taylor Swift’s Shake It Off. I got John Legend’s All of Me: “Wowzers, what a year right? 2014 may have held some special things in it, but this isn’t your first nor your last rodeo. People like you who give their full efforts here on this planet are rare, so anytime you need a reminder of how important you are let this legend from John ride and just reminisce. Thank you for putting so much love, positivity, and good vibes into the atmosphere… it may not seem like too much out of the ordinary for you, but Picasso didn’t know he would grow to be Picasso while he was painting either. We appreciate it, so just stay committed to giving all of yourself (into the right situations of course) in all your endeavors!” Positivity?

GOOGLE ALERTS (not me)

Cole Memorial Hospital’s maternity unit announces that Potter County (PA)’s New Year’s baby on Jan. 1 at 2:20 p.m. Roger Bradley Green.

Obama’s last two years as President

This Democratic President has fulfilled the GOP campaign promises.

Undoubtedly I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating:
1. I don’t support all of Barack Obama’s actions as President. But:
2. When they just make up stuff, it’s counterproductive. Reportedly, Obama is going to dismantle the Marine Corps, which is so obviously false that it is amazing it gets any traction.

What I like about President Obama is that he recognizes income inequality is a problem, even though it’s often hard to do anything about it in this political environment. This belief is behind his support for the very modest increase in the minimum wage to $10.10, and his support for free community college for qualified students, which will – down the road – also help minimize student debt.

When he was down in the polls in the fall of 2014, there were great exaggerations about how bad his approval ratings were historically. Now that he’s beginning to get credit for the nation’s economic turnaround, FOX News and others are bashing the mainstream media with “getting ahead of themselves”. This satire piece is not far off.

But the evidence is clear that the country is already better off economically than the Republicans running in 2012 had promised to achieve by 2016. In other words, this Democratic President has fulfilled the GOP campaign promises.

Interestingly, the loss of the US Senate to the Republicans seems to have energized the President. For instance, he was very funny on the Colbert Report.

More substantively, he desires to open relations with Cuba. He still wants immigration reform, taking action just like his recent predecessors.

Uh, oh: Obama pardons turkey in stunning abuse of executive power.

I’m fascinated by his optimism that the nation is less racially divided today than when he took office six years ago. And he may be right. Perhaps his ascending to the highest office has merely picked at that scab of racism in America that has always been there. This would explain, for instance, Rudy Giuliani’s claim that Obama launched anti-police ‘propaganda’ over the last few months, which rates Four Pinocchios.

A religious writer and former Republican wrote last month about slow motion lynching of President Obama, which I recommend you read BEFORE dismissing it.

I do think this is true: “The president came to Washington thinking he could change Washington, make it better, unite it and the nation. He was wrong. As he ascended, the tone of political discourse descended, as much because of who he was as what he did.”

When the Secret Service arrested a man who threatened to behead President Obama, he was using the racist Tea Party rhetoric still all too common in this country. The President can’t even quote the Bible without criticism from FOX News.

Sometimes it takes Canadians. From 2013: America – He’s Your President for Goodness Sake! Much more recently: You have NO idea just how good you have it.

So I support President Obama, at least in relation to the Republicans, while still criticizing when appropriate. I do believe his heart is in the right place on some basic issues. In addition to what’s been mentioned, I think he is trying to break down gender stereotypes. Surely, he has refused to support DOMA and repealed DADT, two federal laws that discriminated against gay marriage.

It’ll be an interesting two years, and I would not be too quick to assume he’s going to be in “lame duck” mode any time soon.

The 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964

The notion that we could, or should, as a nation, not only allow, but tacitly encourage, discrimination, based on sexual orientation, is quite troubling to me. That we should use religion as the basis of that discrimination is abhorrent to me.

It was late February, the week between when the Arizona state legislature passed S. 1062, allowing a “religious exception” to provide service to people, presumably gay people, and when Governor Jan Brewer vetoed the bill. I was watching JEOPARDY!, in real time. A clue popped up about the Greensboro Four, the young black men who, in February 1960, sat in at a Woolworth’s “whites only” lunch counter.

Suddenly, the Daughter started singing this song, about it, Rosa Parks, and the Little Rock Nine like events, which I had never heard before:

“Some young men in Carolina sat down at a counter and asked for something to eat
Cause they had a dream, yes they had a dream
And when no one served them, they just kept sitting, they never missed a beat
Cause they had a dream, yes they had a dream
They had a dream that all our children could live in harmony
And go to school together and work in the land of liberty”

It was actions such as the Greensboro sit-in, several retaliatory incidents of violence against blacks and of whites who supported them, capped by the peaceful August 1963 March on Washington, that prompted Congress to take action. From the Senate Judiciary committee webpage:

The House Judiciary Committee approved the legislation on October 26, 1963, and formally reported it to the full House on November 20, 1963, just two days before President Kennedy was assassinated. On November 27, 1963, President Lyndon Johnson asserted his commitment to President Kennedy’s legislative agenda, particularly civil rights legislation.

“No memorial oration or eulogy could more eloquently honor President Kennedy’s memory than the earliest possible passage of the Civil Rights Bill for which he fought so long.”

The House of Representatives passed a final version of the Civil Rights Act on February 10, 1964…

After a 54-day filibuster of the legislation, a bipartisan group of Senators introduced a compromise bill. The legislation… was ultimately passed on June 19, 1964, by a vote of 73 to 27. On July 2, 1964, the House voted to adopt the Senate-passed legislation… President Johnson signed the bill into law that very afternoon. The Civil Rights Act paved the way for future anti-discrimination legislation, including the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Here’s another narrative from ten years ago. Check out Bryan Cranston on playing President Lyndon Baines Johnson in the play All the Way.

President Obama has been saluting the passage of the Civil Rights Act and honoring LBJ for his work to make it so. There is no doubt that the Act irrevocably altered the American landscape, and for the better.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. Yet the notion that we could, or should, as a nation, not only allow, but tacitly encourage, discrimination, based on sexual orientation, is quite troubling to me. That we should use religion as the basis of that discrimination is abhorrent to me.

Do we need another Greensboro sit-in, say in Mississippi, which passed a bill, signed by the governor, as onerous as the Arizona bill? Not advocating that (yet), but the thought DID cross my mind.

Cheney and Iraq

Megan Kelly to Dick Cheney: ‘Time and time again, history has proven that you got it wrong as well in Iraq, sir.’

Charlie Rose’s PBS show was on one night a couple of weeks ago, and Thomas Friedman was on, talking about this climate change movie he was involved with; I taped to watch the next night. One sentence jumped out at me. In the places where Arab Spring seemed to have worked, notably Tunisia, it involved an understanding that there needed to be a sharing of power.

Then I started watching the NBC Nightly News, and the foreign correspondent, Richard Engel, was back in Baghdad, Iraq. He explained that the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) was able to progress so quickly because the central Iraq government of Nouri al-Maliki failed to foster shared governance among his Shiites with the Sunnis and the Kurds. As a result, the country of Iraq is, for all intents and purposes, dead and has been replaced by three successor states, former CIA director Gen. Michael Hayden said.

It occurred to me that:
1. Friedman and Engel were saying the same thing: if you don’t play share the toys with each other, bad stuff will inevitably take place.
2. Maybe Joe Biden was right back in 2006 when he suggested essentially a trilateral government. It made sense to me at the time, but he was roundly criticized.

Given the usual predictable partisan rhetoric, I have been in shock of late:
Fox News’ Shep Smith Gives Iraq Hawks A History Lesson
Glenn Beck Admits “Liberals, You Were Right” On Iraq; so does Pat Robertson
*Andrew P. Napolitano’s A Libertarian View of the Iraq War is to stay out.

And maybe the biggest surprise:
FOX News’ Megan Kelly slams former Vice-President Dick Cheney:
“Quoting from Cheney’s Wall Street Journal op-ed, Kelly read, ‘Rarely has a U.S. president been so wrong about so much at the expense of so many,’ before adding, ‘Time and time again, history has proven that you got it wrong as well in Iraq, sir.’
She then proceeds to list some of his most blatant lies – [Weapons of Mass Destruction], liberator’s welcome, etc – before asking ‘what do you say to those who say you were so wrong about so much at the expense of so many?’”

In a rare consensus, Sunnis and Shiites tell Cheney to SHUT UP. Too bad that piece was satire.

Clearly, Cheney is hardly the only Iraq ‘expert’ who is always wrong about Iraq this century. The odd thing about Cheney, though, was that during and after the first Gulf War in the 1990s, he repeatedly said that invading Baghdad would create a quagmire. Despite the Mission Accomplished banner in May 2003, that’s what happened. And it was George W. Bush who signed the order for American troops to leave, not Barack Obama, after failing to get a different arrangement from the Iraqi government.

I do feel very sad for the American veterans of this war and their families. During the recent D-Day remembrances, those old soldiers got to go back to the places they liberated. The Iraq soldier who fought to win Tikrit, the military family whose son or daughter or spouse or parent died in Mosul must wonder about the value of their sacrifice. Unfortunately, a quote attributed to Herbert Hoover has long been true: “Older men declare war. But it is the youth that must fight and die.”

The roots of this conflict are very old, long before the clumsy partitioning of the Ottoman Empire, maybe going back to the origins of the Shiite-Sunni split.

The US reentry into Iraq is making me very nervous, but we’ll see how it plays out.